PLAY WITH MODALITY

There were a number of ways in which members of each group played with the modality of their messages. These can be summarised as follows:

• Emoticons were frequent in all three groups (in the ILB, more often in comments than posts).

• Multiple exclamation and question marks were commonly used to heighten the intended emotion of the message.

• Capitalisation was commonly used to add stress to specific words.

• Other graphic devices including italicisation and asterisks were used to single out or add emphasis to words.

• Ellipsis points were used to add pauses during sentences.

• Interjections were frequently included in messages. These were sometimes taken directly from English examples; while in other instances they were

adapted fully or partly to the rules of Irish phonetics.

• Additional letters were added to words to mimic syllable stress in speech.

Various features of play with modality from the three groups will now be described in greater detail with examples.

Play with modality describes the written features that denote the mode, mood, or manner in which posts and comments are made. In the absence of audiovisual cues, web users use innovative graphical variations to reflect the emotion, intonation, stress, speed, rhythm, pause, and tone of voice that occur in face-to-face communication (Crystal, 2006). These features go some way in preventing readers from misinterpreting the tone of messages from how the writers intended. One feature common to all three groups was the use of emoticons: symbols intended to represent various facial expressions. The emoticons in Irish language CMC are not unique, but use symbols for smiling and frowning faces in the common Western style of English language CMC, with colons and brackets/letters/digits representing a smiling or frowning face when viewed from the side. The following examples show how emoticons have been used to express humour, disappointment and sympathy respectively:

Facebook message 10

OiM: sin an áit ar pháirceáil mé é! :-P that’s the place I parked it! :-P

Blog comment 4

NI: Tá sé in ainm a bheith greannmhar :-\

It is supposed to be funny :-\

Tweet 9

sil: @username1 ouch! :( na héisc bhochta!

@username1 ouch! :( the poor fish!

There were no rules governing what emoticons should or should not be used, and individual users adapted various characters and letters to their own ends. In the ILT, for example, some were used to denote nervousness through the characters :-s and

bewilderment through the characters o.O - the latter meant to symbolise a raised eyebrow.

Other graphical features were used with words to express different intonations and stresses. Again, these features are common to English language CMC. They included the use of multiple exclamation marks and/or question marks to denote emphasis, excitement, sarcasm, or puzzlement as in the following examples:

Blog comment 5

acm: An é fíor a rá go bhfuil an pointe is faide ó thuaidh in Éirinn sa Deisceart!!!!!!!!?????

Is it true to say the most northerly point in Ireland is in the South!!!!!!!!?????

Facebook message 11

AnK: Na Gardaí Síochána : Amadáin !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Police Force : Fools !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!

Tweet 10

Anocht @username1 SRAITH NUA ‘Rásaí Na Gaillimhe 2’!!! Ag tosnú anocht ag 9.30pm!!! Greanmhar, cliste agus Iontach!!!! Ná cailigí ea!!

#tg4

Tonight @username1 NEW SERIES ‘The Galway Races 2’!!! Starting tonight at 9.30pm!!! Funny, clever and Brilliant!!!! Don’t miss it!! #tg4 [Irish language TV channel]

In general exclamation marks were far more common across the three genres than in traditional written genres. For example, in a corpus of almost 2,500 tweets there were over a thousand exclamation marks, with one tweet using six in a row. In a corpus of 2,975 Facebook messages there were 1,870 individual exclamation marks, with one message (Facebook message 11 above) ending in 156 exclamation marks in a row.

Although these marks were used to heighten the sense of emotion, their overuse in many instances acted to diminish their power, with some messages using exclamation marks in seemingly banal everyday sentences. Tweet 10 above is an example of exclamation mark overkill, with multiple exclamation marks used repeatedly in a tweet that is essentially providing information about the start of a new television series.

Capital letters were commonly used to stress specific words in sentences. These were often used to mimic the sound of a raised voice, as in Blog comment 6 and Facebook message 12.

Blog comment 6

CHD: Ach rud beag amháin – tá’s agam go ndeirtear fúinn go mbímid róghoilliúnach anseo i gCorcaigh, ach fós féin NÍ HIONANN STOUT AGUS GUINNESS. Tá Murphys agus Beamish ann leis.

But one small thing – I know that they say we are too sensitive here in Cork, but still STOUT DOES NOT EQUATE TO GUINNESS. There’s Murphys [sic] and Beamish too.

Facebook message 12

MaB: Bí maith, bí ciallmhar ach ná bí …… STUAMA ! Bain sult as a chara !

Be good, be sensible but don’t be …... LEVELHEADED ! Enjoy it my friend !

In other instances word stresses were denoted by marking the word with asterisks.

This feature was also used to denote written actions or sound effects. Again this is a feature common to English language CMC and is used in two distinct ways. Firstly, as in Tweet 11, asterisks are placed on either side of a word to add emphasis. In this instance the author is not entirely sure about what they are tweeting and singles out the word “dóigh” (think) to highlight this uncertainty. Thus asterisks can be used in instances where words might be italicised, underlined or written in bold in traditional written genres. The second common use of asterisks is to indicate where an action is being demonstrated. Blog comment 7 has such an example where the action of sighing is highlighted with asterisks. In other examples from the ILT the act of

exhaling (*asanalú*) and grabbing something (*yoink*) were treated in this way.

Tweet 11

@username1 @username2 ní *dóigh* liom go bhfuil aon cheo mar sin aige go fóill, sílim go raibh sé i gComhar cheana, ach an-seans go mbeid

@username2 @username2 I don’t *think* he has anything like that yet, I think it was in [the magazine] Comhar before, but every chance it will be

Blog comment 7

NI: Ní fheicim mo bhlagsa […] ar an liosta ar dheis. *osna*

I don’t see my blog […] on the list on the right. *sigh*

Another common orthographical feature was the frequent use of ellipsis dots, also noted in Crystal’s (2011) study of English language tweets. In traditional written genres this would commonly indicate the intentional omission of some text. However, in CMC ellipsis dots are used more flexibly, often to mimic the flow and intonation of speech in the text. It is common for ellipsis dots to be used mid-sentence, for example, to break up the rhythm of the writing. This may indicate a pause for thought on behalf of the author (as in Facebook message 13), or build suspense before a revelation however big or small. In Tweet 12, nine ellipsis dots are used to indicate some hesitation on behalf of the user to continue with what she assumes to be a stupid question. When they appear at the end of a tweet (as in Blog comment 8 below) the function appears to be one of finishing a thought without any real closure, the sense of someone trailing off before they’ve reached a satisfactory conclusion. This may act to encourage others to join in the conversation and offer their own thoughts on the topic.

Facebook message 13

AnK: 1972… ni raibh me ach…? bliain d’aois lol!!!!

1972… I was only…? one year old lol!!!!

Tweet 12

@username1 ok brón orm……… ach cé hé Tom Brady? ooppss!

@username1 ok sorry……… but who is Tom Brady? ooppss!

Blog comment 8

RAM: Tugtar an ‘grandmother hypothesis’⁹² air. Hmmm…

They call it the ‘grandmother hypothesis’. Hmmm…

It was very common to include interjections in tweets, expressing a wide range of reactions from surprise and pleasure, to sympathy, sighs and gasps of pain. We’ve already seen in Tweets 8, 9 & 12 and Blog comment 8 examples of English language interjections (Ooh, ouch, ooppss, Hmmm), spelt with combinations of letters that don’t follow the rules of Irish spelling and dropped into otherwise Irish language content. It is clear from these and other examples, that a lot of users in many cases feel more comfortable expressing the sound effects and reactions associated with speech through common English language interjections. These may be the types of interjections users have witnessed in English language CMC elsewhere online. That said, there are many examples of Irish language interjections in the three groups, or at least interjections spelt using Irish phonetics, albeit sometimes with the use of letters alien to the Irish alphabet (i.e. j, k, q, w, y, z).

Blog comment 9

CHD: Iom-iom-IOM! Tá uisce lem’ fhiacla is mé ag breathnú ar an bhfíseán san.

Yum-yum-YUM! My mouth is watering looking at that video.

Facebook message 14

AiC: yéé háá , cad chuige nach bhfuil hata air?

yee haa , why does he not have a hat on?

Tweet 13

squíí :D tá mo mhamaí ag teacht go BÁC ag an d.s., muid ag stopadh in óstán agus tá siad ag cur bricfeasta vegan ar fáil domh :D

squee :D my mammy is coming to Dublin on the w.e., we are stopping in a hotel and they are going to make me a vegan breakfast :D

92 The underline indicates that the words appeared as a hypertext link.

The above three messages have examples of gaelicised interjections. In a creative use of Irish spelling in Blog comment 9, the English interjection ‘yum’ has been spelt

‘iom’ according to the sounds of Irish. The third ‘iom’ as been capitalised to intensify the author’s appreciation for the food being discussed. In Facebook message 13 the author has created a quasi-Irish version of the English expression ‘yeehaw’ using diacritic markers that make sense in Irish, while keeping the non-Irish letter ‘y’.

Tweet 13 takes the English interjection “squee”, commonly used in CMC to express reaction to something cute on screen, and partially gaelicises it by changing the double-e to a double-í, again conforming to the rules of Irish phonetics. However, the letter “q” – alien to the Irish alphabet – is kept, adhering to the general shape of the interjection as it appears in English CMC. Using a combination of lowercase and capital letters, and letters in (á, í) and out (y, q) of the Irish alphabet the above messages are creative interpretations of the sounds of speech, but spelt in ways that make sense specifically in the context of Irish language phonetics. It suggests a desire among some members of each group to adapt their writing to be monolingually Irish, while maintaining the freedom to express gasps, cries, sighs and emotions not usually seen in Irish language writing. It shows a willingness and confidence among Irish web users to engage in new and innovative ways of expressing the sounds and intonations of speech in the confines of text-based on-screen interactions.

Facebook message 15

MaB: MISE !!!! ÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁ ME !!!! AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Blog comment 10

RAM: Ar ndóigh, níor thuig mé a dhath de, ach bhí an bua acu – wúhúúúúúúúúúúúúúúúuu!

Of course I didn’t understand any of it, but they won – woohooooooooooooooooo!

Tweet 14

@username1 ugggggggggh is fuuuuuuuuuath liom sin!!

@username1 ugggggggggh I haaaaaaaaate that!!

Another common feature was the use of additional letters to extend certain syllables in key words. This acted not just to single out words for emphasis, but to mimic how the author might stress the extended syllable in speech. This practice was particularly common in interjections where letters were added to amplify the sound and the emotion imbued in the words. This is the case in Facebook message 15 and Blog comment 10 above, where the gaelicised versions of the English interjections

‘aww’ and ‘woohoo’ have been given greater stress with the repetition of the letters

‘á’ and ‘ú’ respectively. Two dramatic instances can also be seen in Tweet 14 where both the English interjection “ugh” and the Irish word “fuath” (hate) have been given an additional eight g’s and u’s respectively. The emphasis of the word “fuath” in particular leaves us in no doubt of the individual’s dislike for the topic being discussed.